29th November 2005, 12:53 PM
Very well said, i'm reading the article now.
Map maker will make an appearance on the live network, along with the '50 MP players' and other things like the supposed bike. Part or all of the code is in the game, but it's not felshed out and needs patches. So that we can look forward to.
As far as lovable characters go... how rediculous is that? Elvis was obviously the comic relief and he broke up the monotone story quite nicely.
Other than that, you have Jo who was as shallow a character as you could get which is definitely a good thing. The less you put in, the more the gameplayer will feel like that character is them (Chrono never talks or makes opinions, Link never talks etc, all very shallow characters with a purpose).
Though, the occasional quip or nasty remark makes for fun, and her little orgasm sounds when shot were hilarious but quickly became drowned in the 'realism' of the game. Things like foot steps were a joy to behold as when spying and sneaking, your own foot steps make you feel like like a 400 pound gorilla that's going to get caught easily, boosting the suspense. But still, nothing that makes the characters 'lovable' except for the fact that I played the game for 10 years. I quote lines from PD all the time.
"Yes, yes, I agree" "ooohh my gaawwd!" "I aSHUME you have evidence?" "AH GEH DEY! squebidelasklibel AH-KYAAAA!" " *evil voice* ...Get her..." "I'm just TOO good!" " *nerd voice* reprogram the cleaning bot!"
oh hey, I just realized something. PD actually does have its fair share of comedy. The nerdy characters at CI, Elvis, the occasional yelp from bad guys and the classic dry humor you expect from a 'spy game'. So maybe PDZ doesn't have alot of humor, maybe everything overly serious? I really doubt this.
Okay, now lets look at story. In PD you're presented with some interesting takes on things, mostly from other movies, etc. But then, so is Resident Evil and other high profile games. You start by learning about a company you work for that is actually an undercover operation of of an independently owned world security. Okay, that's just plain cool. You learn that the dataDyne corporation is making big business for all the wrong reasons. But they dont explain in the game's story (but it's in the manuals) is that the entire world is over run with corporations.
So we have two major corporations with hidden agendas. What Dark doesn't know is that CI and dD have been working with alien beings from two different species for the past few decades and have had some fruitful enterprises with them. Unfortunately these races are at war with eachother and are only really helping the corporations for added protection because of one major variable that both the aliens and the corporations are trying to find:
A giant sentient ship that crashed in to the atlantic about 5,000 years ago from a race that no longer exists. This ship has th ultimate weapon it. The Skedar (who work with dD) want it to destroy the Maians and eventually enslave man kind as well, the Maians want it to get the Skedar off their back. But first, CI needs the info from a computer called Dr. CARROL, hacking his brain will give CI the upper hand against dD's plots
So after some cat and mouse games and a major plot to replace the president of the US government with a clone, dD eventually finds the ship and CI sends Jo to infiltrate. Jo and Elvis team up and destroy the sentient ship, making it impossible for dD or the Sekdar's to use its ultimate weapon.
The president safe, dD's plot for world domination foiled, the super weapon destroyed, Jo puts on a nice dress... and make up... to attend a party at the white house. The Skedar, a mouth breathing race of aggresors with a love for the intelectually evil plans engages the CI headquarters with a full on invasion. But what did they hope to find here? Jo takes down every Skedar and human-formed 'Mr. Blond' she can, but she's captured and taken aboard a Skedar war ship.
Cassandra DeVries, head of dD corp. realizes her mistakes... now that her life is in danger. She sacrifices herself to create a diversion for Jo to escape. Her only hope is to take control of the bridge and steer th ship back to Earth. Finally taking over the bridge after a huge maze filled with seriously pissed off Skedar and luckily meeting up with Elvis and his crew, they find that they're only meer minutes from the Skedar homeworld.
The Maians ask Jo to help them invade the planet and destroy the Skedar king (of which there are actually 4, the Maians take down 3 of them). The Skedar kings dead, the planet overthrown by the Maians and humanity's future secured, Jo returns home to CI a hero... that no one will ever know about.
Okay, story is actually pretty sweet, very sci-fi meets James Bond which is exactly what PD is. Yes, it's over the top, yes it's campy, but that just adds to the flavor of PD. However, the story takes a major back seat to the gameplay which to this day (I have not played PDZ yet) is the best FPS I have ever played, it should be noted that I have played ALL first person shooters in existence.
The gameplay is designed to go at your own speed but with an added bonus... you can actually become 'perfect'. You can litteraly traverse a level at breakneck speeds on the hardest difficulty and get perfect one-shot headshots killing every enemy on the board and finishing with unbelievable times. It was designed that way. Websites opened up proclaiming that huge levels could be done in less than a minute and world records were displayed, they made no sense, they seemed impossible and yet with practice it could be done, and it felt amazing.
In the multiplayer, it translated here as well. The first time you face a dark sim and realize the game is basically cheating you find out that you can do it too... and become BETTER than a dark sim. You can blindly shoot at a blip on the radar and hit someone on the other side of the world, climb stairs and ladders with bursts of speed while backwards, learn the exact timing of doors so you could close a door as you pass through it, turn around and spray a hell of bullets in to whoever was chasing you as they wait for the door to open... or really piss them off and hit them once in the head from across a room and grab their gun before it hits the ground.
The gameplay is pure and refined, the only problem is the frame rate issues but this can be dealt with by carefully choosing the number of players and bots for each specific level. Even high-res mode will run fine if you learned the max number of players for each map.
Now.... if PDZ is anything like this, then it deserves some serious acclaim. I hear the game has almost no frame issues except for the occasional loading 'click' where you lose a few milliseconds of a frame. Compared to what PD would do (dip to 3 fps for a full minute during major explosive combat) this is hardly a problem.
I think what's going on is the same fate that Nintendo has to deal with. You just cant live up to your own hype after everyone knows for a fact how good its going to be. Poor Nintendo had to push back a major christmas release because they know anything short of devine perfection will be rediculed until the end of time because people will go out of their way to find problems instead of enjoying the game. No one goes out of their way to find problems in a Neversoft game or anything from EA. We expect problems, control issues, lack of gameplay, etc we just try to enjoy what IS there.
But with high profile companies with names like Rareware, Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, etc - we expect nothing short of heaven on disk, And suddenly any and every flaw no matter the almost invisible qualities it possesses are blown way out of proportion. THE HAND CANNON HAS A SLIGHT GRAPHICAL GLITCH, THE FRAME RATE SEEMS TO DROP WHEN YOU ENTER THE WATER TEMPLE, OMG THE VOICE ACTING IS SO HORRIBLE I CANT PLAY THIS GAME IF I HEAR SLIPPY ONE MORE TIME I WILL SELL THIS GAME OMFG and things like that need to be ignored... unless we want every game to go through 3 years of R&D.
Map maker will make an appearance on the live network, along with the '50 MP players' and other things like the supposed bike. Part or all of the code is in the game, but it's not felshed out and needs patches. So that we can look forward to.
As far as lovable characters go... how rediculous is that? Elvis was obviously the comic relief and he broke up the monotone story quite nicely.
Other than that, you have Jo who was as shallow a character as you could get which is definitely a good thing. The less you put in, the more the gameplayer will feel like that character is them (Chrono never talks or makes opinions, Link never talks etc, all very shallow characters with a purpose).
Though, the occasional quip or nasty remark makes for fun, and her little orgasm sounds when shot were hilarious but quickly became drowned in the 'realism' of the game. Things like foot steps were a joy to behold as when spying and sneaking, your own foot steps make you feel like like a 400 pound gorilla that's going to get caught easily, boosting the suspense. But still, nothing that makes the characters 'lovable' except for the fact that I played the game for 10 years. I quote lines from PD all the time.
"Yes, yes, I agree" "ooohh my gaawwd!" "I aSHUME you have evidence?" "AH GEH DEY! squebidelasklibel AH-KYAAAA!" " *evil voice* ...Get her..." "I'm just TOO good!" " *nerd voice* reprogram the cleaning bot!"
oh hey, I just realized something. PD actually does have its fair share of comedy. The nerdy characters at CI, Elvis, the occasional yelp from bad guys and the classic dry humor you expect from a 'spy game'. So maybe PDZ doesn't have alot of humor, maybe everything overly serious? I really doubt this.
Okay, now lets look at story. In PD you're presented with some interesting takes on things, mostly from other movies, etc. But then, so is Resident Evil and other high profile games. You start by learning about a company you work for that is actually an undercover operation of of an independently owned world security. Okay, that's just plain cool. You learn that the dataDyne corporation is making big business for all the wrong reasons. But they dont explain in the game's story (but it's in the manuals) is that the entire world is over run with corporations.
So we have two major corporations with hidden agendas. What Dark doesn't know is that CI and dD have been working with alien beings from two different species for the past few decades and have had some fruitful enterprises with them. Unfortunately these races are at war with eachother and are only really helping the corporations for added protection because of one major variable that both the aliens and the corporations are trying to find:
A giant sentient ship that crashed in to the atlantic about 5,000 years ago from a race that no longer exists. This ship has th ultimate weapon it. The Skedar (who work with dD) want it to destroy the Maians and eventually enslave man kind as well, the Maians want it to get the Skedar off their back. But first, CI needs the info from a computer called Dr. CARROL, hacking his brain will give CI the upper hand against dD's plots
So after some cat and mouse games and a major plot to replace the president of the US government with a clone, dD eventually finds the ship and CI sends Jo to infiltrate. Jo and Elvis team up and destroy the sentient ship, making it impossible for dD or the Sekdar's to use its ultimate weapon.
The president safe, dD's plot for world domination foiled, the super weapon destroyed, Jo puts on a nice dress... and make up... to attend a party at the white house. The Skedar, a mouth breathing race of aggresors with a love for the intelectually evil plans engages the CI headquarters with a full on invasion. But what did they hope to find here? Jo takes down every Skedar and human-formed 'Mr. Blond' she can, but she's captured and taken aboard a Skedar war ship.
Cassandra DeVries, head of dD corp. realizes her mistakes... now that her life is in danger. She sacrifices herself to create a diversion for Jo to escape. Her only hope is to take control of the bridge and steer th ship back to Earth. Finally taking over the bridge after a huge maze filled with seriously pissed off Skedar and luckily meeting up with Elvis and his crew, they find that they're only meer minutes from the Skedar homeworld.
The Maians ask Jo to help them invade the planet and destroy the Skedar king (of which there are actually 4, the Maians take down 3 of them). The Skedar kings dead, the planet overthrown by the Maians and humanity's future secured, Jo returns home to CI a hero... that no one will ever know about.
Okay, story is actually pretty sweet, very sci-fi meets James Bond which is exactly what PD is. Yes, it's over the top, yes it's campy, but that just adds to the flavor of PD. However, the story takes a major back seat to the gameplay which to this day (I have not played PDZ yet) is the best FPS I have ever played, it should be noted that I have played ALL first person shooters in existence.
The gameplay is designed to go at your own speed but with an added bonus... you can actually become 'perfect'. You can litteraly traverse a level at breakneck speeds on the hardest difficulty and get perfect one-shot headshots killing every enemy on the board and finishing with unbelievable times. It was designed that way. Websites opened up proclaiming that huge levels could be done in less than a minute and world records were displayed, they made no sense, they seemed impossible and yet with practice it could be done, and it felt amazing.
In the multiplayer, it translated here as well. The first time you face a dark sim and realize the game is basically cheating you find out that you can do it too... and become BETTER than a dark sim. You can blindly shoot at a blip on the radar and hit someone on the other side of the world, climb stairs and ladders with bursts of speed while backwards, learn the exact timing of doors so you could close a door as you pass through it, turn around and spray a hell of bullets in to whoever was chasing you as they wait for the door to open... or really piss them off and hit them once in the head from across a room and grab their gun before it hits the ground.
The gameplay is pure and refined, the only problem is the frame rate issues but this can be dealt with by carefully choosing the number of players and bots for each specific level. Even high-res mode will run fine if you learned the max number of players for each map.
Now.... if PDZ is anything like this, then it deserves some serious acclaim. I hear the game has almost no frame issues except for the occasional loading 'click' where you lose a few milliseconds of a frame. Compared to what PD would do (dip to 3 fps for a full minute during major explosive combat) this is hardly a problem.
I think what's going on is the same fate that Nintendo has to deal with. You just cant live up to your own hype after everyone knows for a fact how good its going to be. Poor Nintendo had to push back a major christmas release because they know anything short of devine perfection will be rediculed until the end of time because people will go out of their way to find problems instead of enjoying the game. No one goes out of their way to find problems in a Neversoft game or anything from EA. We expect problems, control issues, lack of gameplay, etc we just try to enjoy what IS there.
But with high profile companies with names like Rareware, Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, etc - we expect nothing short of heaven on disk, And suddenly any and every flaw no matter the almost invisible qualities it possesses are blown way out of proportion. THE HAND CANNON HAS A SLIGHT GRAPHICAL GLITCH, THE FRAME RATE SEEMS TO DROP WHEN YOU ENTER THE WATER TEMPLE, OMG THE VOICE ACTING IS SO HORRIBLE I CANT PLAY THIS GAME IF I HEAR SLIPPY ONE MORE TIME I WILL SELL THIS GAME OMFG and things like that need to be ignored... unless we want every game to go through 3 years of R&D.